


warm me up

by playingprince



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Mythology, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Fluff, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Light Angst, Lots of nudity, M/M, Yes Really, renjun is a fox, sexual petting (the literal kind), some mentions of violence/blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:02:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24710506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/playingprince/pseuds/playingprince
Summary: Jeno does not realize, as he lifts the little broken-legged fox from his back shed floor, that he's gotten far more than he's bargained for.(In which Renjun is a fox. Not anactualfox, but like, a boy-fox. You know. A fox boy.)
Relationships: Huang Ren Jun/Lee Jeno
Comments: 84
Kudos: 545





	warm me up

**Author's Note:**

> this fic contains non-explicit sex scenes and mentions of violence/blood/death! it also includes references to (perceived) homophobia.
> 
> in other words, it is NSFW(ish), so read with caution. otherwise.... enjoy!

The wind was cold on the night that Jeno heard a crash from his outside workshed. So cold that, as he shoved open his cabin door, it struck him in the face like a heavy blow and made his ears red and painful. They numbed seconds later, along with his fingers, despite the thick woolen gloves he wore.

A blizzard had pushed in that afternoon. It had appeared as thick white clouds that covered the sky from top to bottom in its downy, pale layers. Then the ground had become white, too, showered with snow that fell in clumpy flakes. White sky, white ground. Jeno had felt as though he was living inside an icicle.

It was the first grand snowfall of the year. It was always cold where Jeno lived, far north at the feet of a rugged mountain range. Snow always came unusually early, this time in the final week of October, and stuck around far past when it was welcome, sometimes late into May. Summers were short and cool and made of more gray skies than blue. Jeno was used to it; he’d lived in the north his whole life, and it took a lot more than a little blizzard to slow him down. He’d spent all day working in his shed, constructing a fine oak rocking chair from some slabs he’d cut the week prior, while watching the snow pile beyond his window.

And he’d been quite certain that, when he’d turned in for the night, he had locked his shed door. But here it was, open, slamming repeatedly against its frame as it was battered by the wind. Jeno rubbed his sleeve over his eyes to try and remove the blinding snowflakes from his lashes. With his other hand, he tightened his grip on the handle of his rifle.

He hovered at the side of the banging door for a moment, trying to press his ear to the crack and hear if anything was moving inside. Worst case scenario, it was a thief or a killer or a stowaway, which is why he'd brought the gun and steeled himself to use it. Second-worst case, a wolf, which he’d have more qualms about shooting — he had a soft spot for animals. But he knew if it came down to it, he would defend himself. He’d feel sorry, but he would do it.

He heard nothing, which he wasn’t sure was a good sign. He stuck the barrel of his rifle in the door’s crack, propping it open as it continued to rattle on its hinges. He could see what had caused the crash: his stack of wood in the far corner had toppled over, pieces scattered about the floor. He wondered if something like a mouse could have done it, had it nudged one of the logs at the bottom of the stack just the right way and destroyed the tower’s delicate balance. The thought of it being something so harmless made him braver. He stuck the toe of his boot through the door’s threshold, and hauled himself inside.

Nothing. He held the rifle up, ready to shoot, but he seemed to be alone.

“Hello?” he called.

No one answered. He laid his rifle against the side of his work table, found his book of matches on top of it, and lit his lantern. The shed was illuminated by its orange glow, which produced wavering shadows. He scanned the room again and found only what belonged there: scrap wood and sawdust; his tools hung on the back wall; that afternoon’s creation, ready to be taken to the market in the morning, if he could manage to navigate the snow hills.

_Maybe it was a mouse, afterall._

He replaced his lantern on the table, readying to blow out its flame.

Then he heard a subtle rustling, like a hand passing over an animal’s pelt, and a thump. Jeno took up his rifle again, and skirted the edge of the room, scanning along the floor.

He saw it in the corner, hiding beneath one of his benches. The toes of a furry foot, the end of a tail, and a smear of blood. Jeno lowered his rifle again, and edged closer, lowering himself to get a better look.

It was not a wolf, but a fox. An arctic fox, Jeno thought, whose fur had already gone white all over except for its toes, which retained its leftover summer gray. It appeared badly injured — a gash in its right hind leg, and a slash along its throat, as if someone had taken to it with a knife. The ruff of fur at its chest was stained bright red; the wounds were fresh.

When it saw Jeno approaching, the fox scrambled backwards, pressing against the wall. Its golden eyes glinted in the lantern light, fear obvious and on fire.

Jeno knew he was not in danger anymore. He dropped his gun on the floor beside him, and held out a tentative hand. “It’s okay,” he murmured. “I won’t hurt you.”

The fox responded with a snarl, made thin by its breathlessness. A mix of blood and saliva dripped from its open mouth, hitting the wood floor with a thick plop.

Jeno inched even closer, releasing a soft _shh_ between his teeth. He thought if he could just pet it, prove that his touch wasn’t dangerous, then maybe the fox would understand —

Instead, it lunged and snapped his hand shut in its jaws.

Jeno swore, feeling teeth cutting him open, bone against bone. He managed to tear himself free, lifting his torn, trembling hand up to the light so he could check the damage. Two deep punctures in his palm, and several smaller scratches. Nothing he couldn’t recover from in a week or two, but it still hurt like hell.

“You’re a little spitfire, aren’t you?” he asked the fox, with a pained smile.

It growled again in confirmation.

Jeno grabbed a rag from one of his work benches and tied it around his hand to soak the blood. Then, he sat down on the floor in front of the fox, a few feet away just to be safe, and made himself comfortable.

“I’ll wait,” he told it, “till whenever you’re ready.”

He spent the next half hour listening to the fox’s ragged breath and watching the firelight shadows dance on the ceiling. Outside, the blizzard continued on, whipping against the glass panes of the shed window. He began to worry that the fox would bleed out, but knew he had to stay calm. He couldn’t force it out of hiding. He could only watch it, the heaving of its tiny chest, the dimming fear in its eyes.

He began to hum, a nursery rhyme he knew from his childhood. It was almost lost over the high howl of the wind, but he knew the fox could hear it from the tilting of its ears. Jeno smiled, but didn’t rush.

Finally, he tried again. This time, the fox did not snarl or snap, so he let his fingers slip into its fur. It flinched, but was too tired to fight back again. Jeno gently drew its body from beneath the bench, scooping it into his arms.

“You’re safe now,” he said. Then he pushed the shed door open with his shoulder, and carried to fox over the frozen stretch of ground to his cabin.

Inside, the hearth was still warm, a flickering, bright oasis. Jeno brought the fox to the fireside and lay its body on a towel so he could examine it. Upon closer inspection, the wound at its throat was not a knife slash, but a gory tear produced by another animal’s teeth. Jeno hurried to his cabinet and retrieved his roll of bandages.

He was up until three in the morning, dressing the fox’s wounds. He was tired, so his work was clumsy, but he pushed through, swallowing yawn after yawn, until he was finished. The fox did not move. It squeezed its eyes shut, relinquishing itself to Jeno’s touch, seeming to know it would die otherwise.

When Jeno finally turned in, he kept watching the fox at the hearthside until he fell asleep. He did not realize that, in his efforts, he’d forgotten his own wound, running through its rag, and would wake with blood-stained bed sheets.

(But it wouldn’t matter; he would think it was worth it.)

—

He would also be very, very surprised, and not only by the blood.

Lazily, he rolled out of his bed, not feeling at all well-rested, wishing he could linger longer beneath his blankets. But he had things to do, like clearing a path from his front door through the snow to make it easier to navigate the yard, and loading his chair into his truck to carry into town. He walked up to the window, pushing aside the curtains. Looking at all the snow was enough to give him a chill. Idly, he thought he should add another log to the fire, and walked around the couch towards the hearth.

There was a boy lying on his floor.

Jeno stumbled back into the wall, and his first thought was of his rifle, which he’d unwisely left in his shed.

Meanwhile, the boy simply lay there beside the hearth, staring up at Jeno with unaffected golden eyes. His silver hair fell away from his forehead in wisps, and his face was almost impossibly pale, as if he’d been carved from ice, aside from the pink of his lips and ears and the tip of his nose. A carving, Jeno thought, should have been the only way to achieve that sort of perfection — every feature was delicate as if idealized by an artist’s hand.

The boy was also completely naked. Jeno tried not to let his gaze creep lower than the boy’s neck.

His neck.

On it was a terrible wound, produced by gnashing teeth. Beneath it, unfurled, was a bundle of bandages, bloodied.

Disbelieving, Jeno said, “You aren’t that fox, are you?”

The boy blinked and said nothing.

Jeno walked a circle around him, still weary of getting too close. From the other side, he could see the wound on the boy’s leg, too, an exact match to the fox’s. Somehow, Jeno found himself beginning to buy in, though he knew it was crazy. Maybe the previous night had been some kind of hallucination, and there had never been a fox at all — just a cold, naked boy in his workshed, sheltering there from the blizzard. Or maybe Jeno was seeing things now, and the fox was still there on the floor, but his brain had done an uninvited backflip and was showing him a different image completely.

Those eyes, those golden eyes, were the very same ones he had stared into last night. That much, he knew for certain. So he knelt down beside the boy, and gathered the broken bandages from beneath his leg. They were too small to fit him now — the right size for a fox, but on the boy, they must have snapped. Jeno’s bandage kit still sat at the hearthside. He unspooled a fresh bundle of it, and began to wrap it just below the boy’s knee, where the wound still glistened freshly.

All the while, the boy stared Jeno down with his porcelain doll face. His eyes weren’t dreamy or hazy, but intensely alert, and the rest of his countenance placid — lips unquirked, brows simple, straight lines.

“I don’t get it,” Jeno said under his breath as he worked. “I don’t get what this is — or, what you _are_.”

Silence, apart from the crackle of the fire.

“I guess you don’t speak,” Jeno observed. “Though if you’re actually a fox, that makes sense.” He taped the end of the bandage down, then shuffled down towards the boy’s head to get a better angle on his neck. A bit of dried blood had crept up his chin; Jeno wiped it away with a wet cloth, then tried to lift the boy’s head so he could wrap the bandage underneath. Apparently, his fingers pressed too close to the gash, because just like the night before, he received a sharp bite on the hand. Fortunately, these teeth were duller than the last time (though his canines must be pointier than a typical human’s, Jeno thought, or maybe that was the resurgence of pain in his unhealed hand talking).

Through gritted teeth, Jeno said, “Please let go.”

The boy regarded him with an icy glare, but after thinking it over for a moment, released him.

Jeno finished wrapping the bandage, then tended his own wound. He flexed his palm beneath the gauze. It stung, but it was tolerable.

When he turned back around, he saw that the boy had finally shut his eyes. Jeno wondered how much blood he had lost — he must have still been feeling pretty weak to rest in the presence of a stranger, especially considering how skittish he’d been the night before. Jeno wasn’t sure what to do. He couldn’t exactly bring the boy into town to see a doctor, since he wasn’t even sure whether he was human or fox. Not to mention what people might think of him towing a stranger who couldn’t speak into a place where everyone knew everyone.

Jeno decided that the best thing to do was to get him something to eat, then let him rest. On his counter were some strips of jerky, recently dried and smelling of salt. He brought them to the boy’s side, and held one in front of his nose.

“Do you want this?” he asked.

The boy sniffed it, then took it between his teeth, not bothering to use his hands. He ate it so quickly that Jeno thought he might have swallowed it whole. Jeno offered another piece, then a third.

 _Just like giving a dog its treats,_ Jeno thought. He wondered how much the boy was really a boy at all, and how much he was canine. A funny little impulse followed, and Jeno absentmindedly placed a hand on top of the boy’s head, petting his hair in the place that might be between his ears, if he were still a fox.

The boy emitted a low rumbling from between his teeth.

Jeno quietly retracted his hand.

The grandfather clock in the corner showed it was nearing eleven, and Jeno hauled himself to his feet. He needed to get to the market early, while it would still be busy with the morning rush. He glanced once more at the boy’s body curled on the rug, and it occurred to him again that he was still naked. In an attempt to preserve the boy’s modesty, Jeno collected a button-front shirt from his wardrobe and carefully helped the boy into it (who remained staunchly limp, as if he were being difficult on purpose). He snapped the buttons up until there was one left undone at the collar, and tugged the ends down to cover his privates. Jeno’s shirt was just large enough on the boy that it accomplished this easily. Finally, Jeno took a blanket from the end of his bed and tossed it over the boy, making sure he would be warm in case the fire dimmed too low, then stepped away to put on his own boots and coat.

“Just lay there and heal,” Jeno told the boy from the door, as if he could understand him. “And don’t go outside. I’ll see you when I get back. Okay?”

The boy stared back.

Jeno stepped out into remnants of last night’s blizzard.

—

It took Jeno a long time to scrape the snow and ice from his truck, and even longer to clear a path to the road, which had been left helpfully unplowed. Panting and sore-handed from the shovel, Jeno dropped into the driver’s seat and said a prayer as he turned the key. Thankfully, the engine roared to life. He pressed the gas, and slowly, the truck was able to push through snow, which was fresh enough that it hadn’t gone wet and packy yet. The wheels slid through the feathery hills, and the loosened flakes sprayed up against the windshield.

The drive from his house to the nearest village was twenty-five minutes. He made it once or twice a week, so he could stop in at the market to buy food, or gasoline for his truck, as well as sell and take requests for his work. Being so isolated in the north, it was a largely self-sufficient community, which meant there was always a place in it for hunters, crafters, and, in Jeno’s case, woodworkers.

Even further, about an hour to the southeast, was Jeno’s hometown, where his parents still lived in their little two-story house with the anchors embroidered into their curtains. It was a harbor town, poised at the mouth of a river as it poured into the sea. Not as cold as where Jeno lived, and much busier, a trading hotspot in the dead of the Northern County. He’d been happy there as a child, but the bustle had never quite suited him. He’d moved out to his quiet cabin by the mountains shortly after coming of age.

When he reached the village, he parked his truck at the back side of the inn and dropped down onto the snowy ground. Around the corner, the market stalls were opening for the morning. A woman with jangly gold bracelets arranged her hand-woven, bright-dyed wool sweaters on her table. The butcher strung up his fresh cuts and coiled sausage links in a delectable pile. By the bank, a man stood outside smoking a cigarette and counting the bills in his hand. Jeno gave him a wave, and beelined towards him.

“Hey,” the man said, reaching out and shaking Jeno’s hand. “Got it ready for me?” He tucked the cigarette back between his teeth and grinned. He was a fisherman that lived in the village who had asked Jeno to build him a rocking chair for his house. It was the project Jeno had been working on the day before. They walked to the back of Jeno’s truck, stepping up into the bed of it to lift the chair down, and carried it between the inn and the bookshop, turning sharp towards the fisherman’s house.

Once it was inside, the stack of bills was passed into Jeno’s hands, and he slipped it into his back pocket as he strolled down the village’s main street. He paused to buy a carton of eggs and a bottle of milk from the corner shop, and was going to walk back to his truck when he suddenly stopped in front of the glass shopfront of the bookstore. He’d stopped because he could see the shop owner in the very back, seated behind his desk and sipping on a cup of tea. The bookstore owner was an elderly man, one of the oldest who lived there, with deep wrinkles across his forehead and a thin, wispy beard that curled just like the steam from his cup.

The bookstore owner also knew more than anyone else in town. In part from all the books, in part from living such a long, full life. If anyone might have an idea of what the situation was that Jeno had found himself in that morning, it would be him.

Jeno pushed open the front door, and a bell above it jingled. The man at the desk gave Jeno a friendly nod in greeting, then turned attention back to his reading. So as not to seem so suspiciously specific in his request, Jeno spent some time ghosting his fingers along the spines of the shelved books, as if he were searching for something he could not find, before saying, “Do you happen to have any books about the supernatural? Like, spirits and such?”

The old man lifted his head. “What? Like, ghosts, you mean?”

“No — not quite.” Jeno abandoned his charade and approached the desk, juggling his eggs and milk under his arm. “More like… animal spirits?” He’d heard fairy tales like that as a child, about animals who could change shape. He’d never really believed them, but now, it seemed like the best explanation.

“Oh. Like the local legends, then?” The old man stood and shuffled out from behind his desk. Standing, he only reached about to Jeno’s shoulder. “I’m surprised. Most young people don’t have much interest in that sort of thing.”

Jeno offered an awkward smile. “Ah — I just remembered a story I’d been told as a child, is all. I was trying to find it again.”

“Really.” The old man stepped onto a stool beside one of the shelves so he could reach up to the top row. “You haven’t had an _experience_ of some kind, have you?”

Jeno should have known that the bookshop owner was too wise to fool. Still, he insisted, “No. I guess I’m just curious. Besides, that sort of thing isn’t real, is it?”

The old man _tsk-_ ed. “When I was your age, it was as real to us as the ground beneath our feet. It’s only recently that it’s gone out of fashion to believe in spirits. I don’t understand it — walk in the forest, and it’s obvious that nature is more than just what we can see.”

“You’ve encountered this sort of thing before, then?”

“If I said I did, would you believe me?”

Jeno swallowed. He might have said no the day before. But his gut was telling him that the boy on his floor was not ordinary. In fact, he was quite sure he was not a boy at all.

“Yes,” Jeno said. “I would.”

The old man grinned as he stepped back down, holding a heavy, leather-bound book with gold leafing pressed into vines across its cover. He set it on his desk, and when he flipped it open, it made a heavy thump, kicking up dust that had settled into the ridges of its pages.

“There are many different kinds of spirits,” the man told him, browsing the pages. Snakes, bears, and owls flashed by, illustrated in thin charcoal lines. There were even creatures Jeno did not recognize, and he realized, as he leaned in closer, that they were personifications of things like trees and rivers and even stone. One, a pond creature, looked much like a human but with her hair slick wet and tangled with sticks and leaves. Her skin had a faint green sheen, as though algae covered her shoulders and cheeks.

“Wow,” Jeno whispered, leaning over the table as the old man continued to flip through. “There’s so many. I had no idea.” He could recognize some of them from stories he’d heard when he was little. There was a big dark hound, which he was certain he’d been told of by his grandmother once, as she’d recounted it following her home from the well one day as a teenager. It was fascinating, to see his world recontextualized, painted again in the way it had been as a child.

The page turned to an arctic fox.

Jeno, impulsively, reached out a hand to stop the old man before he could flip past it.

“Oh?” The old man let the book settle open there, showing a collection of illustrations. To Jeno, they were eerily familiar: a small white fox with golden eyes, and beside it, a young man and woman, both with icy pale bodies and silver hair. “This one interests you?” the old man asked.

“Yes.” Jeno touched a finger to the page, tracing the line of the fox’s back.

The old man read the beginning of the passage, and explained, “They’re a shapeshifting creature. A trickster.” He gave Jeno a warning glance. “It says to be wary of them. They’re seducers.”

“Seducers?” Jeno stepped back from the desk.

“That’s what it says here.” The old man shrugged. “Though humans get the matters of nature confused all the time.” Sharply, he added, “Perhaps, if you’ve run into a deity of some sort, you ought to ask it yourself.”

Dismissively, Jeno put on a show of checking his watch and announcing, “Oh — I’d better get going. Thank you for helping me.”

“Sure,” the old man said through thin, quirked lips.

 _Seducer,_ Jeno’s mind continued to echo as he raced out of the shop and back around the corner towards his truck. He thought of the boy’s smooth, exposed skin, and his slim, dainty body.

Then he shook his head. “Absolutely not,” he told himself, hopping back up into the driver’s seat and turning the engine back on with a roar.

—

When Jeno entered through his front door, pulling his cap from his head and shaking the melted snowflakes from it, he discovered that the boy was no longer lying in front of the hearth.

At first, his stomach dropped in panic. His gaze flew around the cabin, wide-eyed, until he found the boy sitting upon his kitchen counter, helping himself to more of Jeno’s food. He had a stick of licorice hanging from between his lips, sucking its end, and in his hands was Jeno’s radio. He fumbled with the dial, switching between static and an announcer with a deep voice and a lady telling the weather report and then more static.

He was also naked again. Jeno threw an exasperated hand over his eyes and peered shyly between his fingers.

“Where the hell did your clothes go?” he groaned.

“I took them off. I found them too restrictive.”

Jeno just about fell back on his ass, into the puddle he’d tracked in onto his door mat.

“You can talk?” he asked. His voice cracked unbecomingly on the last syllable.

“Of course I can talk.” And he talked softly, coyly, though Jeno wondered if half the reason was the wound at his neck — he could sense the underlying breathlessness, and how the boy was pushing through it to seem unaffected. He shoved the rest of the licorice stick into his mouth and, as he did with the jerky, seemed to swallow it whole. “How silly, to assume I’m a mute.”

“But you didn’t say a word all morning, when I was talking to you —”

“I thought it would be more entertaining that way. You, all frenzied as you doted on me — I was having plenty of fun just watching.” He shut off Jeno’s radio and collapsed its antenna, setting it beside him on the counter. “You should have seen yourself when you saw me there on the floor. Your eyeballs just about fell out of your head. Kind of like they are right now.”

Jeno took a deep breath and rubbed his temple. “So. You’re that fox, right?”

“I am. I’ve simply put on different clothes.” The boy glanced downwards, remembered his nakedness, and added, “Perhaps I should say _skin_ , not clothes.”

“You can just switch forms like that?”

“Yes. If you haven’t guessed, I’m not your typical fox.”

 _So it’s like the man said,_ Jeno thought. The boy was a shapeshifting spirit, one who’d come from the woods. Jeno had used to believe in that sort of thing, because he’d been told tales when he was a child of how the world was more alive than it seemed. He remembered his mother once telling him that if he ever saw a water spout out beyond the piers, that there was a spirit inside it, dancing in a tight circle. They never meant to do harm, she’d said. They were only trying to do something beautiful; but humans had a way of misinterpreting nature’s beauty as danger.

And so, Jeno was no longer skeptical of the boy on his countertop. The shock had worn off. There was proof enough in the silver hair and brass-gold eyes.

“Are you a god?” he asked.

The boy smirked an appropriately fox-like smirk. “ _God_ might be a strong word, though I like the sound of it. _Spirit_ would be more accurate. Perhaps even _fairy_ , or _nymph._ But above all that, I am a fox.”

 _And presently,_ Jeno thought, _you’re a boy._ His guard lowered enough that he felt comfortable stooping to remove his boots. “If you’re able to switch between fox and human, then why did you wait? Why didn’t you transform last night in my shed, instead of hiding beneath my work bench?”

“Suffice it to say, I was a bit panicked,” the boy admitted. He curled his feet up onto the counter, turning so he could peer out the window. He gazed in the direction of Jeno’s shed, as if he could still hear the slamming of its door in the wind. “My _animal instinct_ , we’ll say, drove me into that workshed. Then you walked in, and I thought about transforming then, but I didn’t want to spook you senseless. Imagine your shock if I went from fox to boy right before your eyes.” He laughed at the thought. His eyes crinkled to half-moons, and his smile showed his unusually pointy teeth. “Not to mention it was safer for me. I won’t transform unless I’m absolutely certain I’m somewhere safe. You brandishing that rifle — not exactly an assuring image.”

Jeno arranged his boots by the mat, and stripped off his heavy coat. He hung it on the rack, then leaned against the back of his couch, facing into the kitchen. “What do you mean by that? In what way is being a fox safer?”

“It’s something of a trade-off, switching forms.” There was a thin layer of fog on the kitchen window. The boy dragged a finger through it, making two upside down triangles — the ears of a fox. “In my fox form — my natural form — I can’t be killed by a human. You could have taken that rifle and shot me straight through the skull, but the bullet would not have stuck. It would have fallen away from me, and the wound would have immediately repaired itself. That’s the thing about beings like me — we don’t quite live in your world. We overlap it, and we can interact with it, but only in part. It’s advantageous in some ways, but difficult for you humans to understand.” He added a long muzzle, four petite paws, and a tail.

Jeno crossed his arms and clicked his tongue thoughtfully. “Then what about your wounds? How did you get them, if you can’t be harmed?”

With his other hand, the boy touched the bandage around his neck. “Can’t be harmed by the dangers of _your_ world. However, I’m fully vulnerable to the dangers of my own world. These wounds did not come from a man. They came from a being in my realm. Another spirit.”

Jeno frowned. He did not want to house a being that had so clearly pissed off another supernatural entity — he was not very fond of the idea of getting caught up in a god’s war. “Is your being here unsafe for _me_?” he asked. “Are you some kind of troublemaker? Is something dangerous about to show up at my doorstep asking for your head?”

The boy abruptly stopped drawing with his finger, making a tiny screech against the fogged glass. “That’s precisely why I decided to transform. The benefit of a human’s body is that I cannot be tracked by other spirits. They can’t smell me, because my scent is indiscernible from that of an ordinary human. In other words, they’ve lost my trail, so long as I stay like this.”

“You’d said it was a trade-off,” Jeno remembered.

“Yes. Though I can’t be hunted by them any longer, I can be hunted by _you._ ” He moved onto the next pane. He began to draw a stick figure of a human, though the condensation melted from it, making it appear slick with rain. “This form blurs the lines further between our worlds. It makes me vulnerable. Let’s consider your rifle again — if you shot me in the skull now, I would die on the spot, brain splattered on your ceiling. Just as an ordinary human would. And that’s why I waited to be sure you wouldn’t harm me. I’m too weak in this form to take the chance.”

Then, as if on cue, he let out a hoarse cough, which seemed to hurt him. Jeno instinctively met him at the counter, placing one hand under his elbow and the other at his waist to help him back to the floor. Too late, he remembered the boy’s injured leg, and watched as he stumbled awkwardly on it, sucking in a pained breath.

“Are you alright?” Jeno asked.

The boy pulled away from him and raised his chin, banishing any hint of weakness from his face. “Of course I am, human. And I’d like you to ask permission next time before you touch me.”

Jeno snorted. “Sure.”

“I simply need more time to rest. I’ll be in perfect shape again in no time.” Uninvited, he limped to Jeno’s bed, and lounged across it. Jeno thought that, even like this, his body was fox-like: small, slender, moving in a way that was at once languid and sharp. _Slinky,_ Jeno thought, was a good word for it. “I’ll be taking another nap. Let me know when dinner time is.”

“Hold on,” Jeno said. “How long exactly are you planning on staying here?”

“Until I’m well. You wouldn’t turn me back outside in such a state, would you? When I’m so vulnerable?” He fluttered his lashes against Jeno’s pillow.

 _He sure can switch on a dime,_ Jeno thought. _One moment, he needs no one’s help, and the next, he’s a damsel._

Jeno did, in fact, have half a mind to turn him back outside. He might have, if it weren’t so bitter cold. For now, he walked to the hearth and stoked its flames, watching the way the light it threw danced along the boy’s ribs, his hips.

—

“What’s your name?” was a question Jeno had been too distracted to ask before, and now, several hours later, he was kicking himself for it. The boy still lay on his bed, curled up beneath his blankets and asleep. It was difficult to tread around a sleeping person in that cabin, as it was only one room and the floors creaked underfoot, but the boy must have been terribly tired, as he didn’t even stir once in his sleep. He slept from early that afternoon until well into the evening. Jeno had even managed to cook dinner without the smell luring the boy awake. He made him a plate, and walked over to the bedside. He did not wake the boy right away; instead, he stared down at him a moment, admiring the pretty curve of his upper lip and downward slope of his nose. He wondered if all spirits possessed that sort of other-worldly beauty. He wondered if the version of the world they lived in was more beautiful than his own.

The boy cracked open a golden eye.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

Jeno blushed and took a step back, placing the plate on the bedside stand. “Sorry. I was about to wake you for dinner.”

The boy sat up halfway, the blanket falling from around his shoulders. He took his fork, and poked at the fried sausages as if trying to determine their suitability.

“By the way,” Jeno said, very casually, as he picked at a loose thread at his shirt collar. “What’s your name?”

“I don’t have one,” the boy said. “Not in any real sense. Not in the same way you do.”

Jeno almost questioned this, but decided any affair of the supernatural would be too beyond his understanding to be a worthwhile conversation. Instead, he asked, “What should I call you, then?”

“Hmm.” The boy sat up straight against the pillows and balanced his plate in his lap. Staring down at the steam that rose from the food, he said with a nostalgic glimmer in his eye, “Well, there was someone who gave me a name once. It was an especially sparse winter — a bit like this one — and it was hard to come by something to eat. I came upon this old house on a cliffside, and pawed at the doorstep. It was a last resort — I don’t like to rely on humans, if I can help it. Anyhow, this elderly woman answered, and behind those giant glasses of hers, she must have mistook me for a cat, because she let me into her house and fed me a plate of fish.” He laughed, which turned into a cough as he lost his breath for a moment. He swallowed, calmed the rattle in his chest, and went on, “I stayed for a little while. She would have me in her lap in her rocking chair and stroke my fur, and she was so fond of me she gave me a name. _Renjun._ A human name, I think. So you can call me that, if you want.”

It was the first time Jeno saw a tenderness in the boy’s — Renjun’s — face. It was humanizing, which made Jeno wonder how different a spirit and a human were after all.

“What happened to the old woman?” Jeno asked.

Renjun took a large bite from his plate. The warmth in his belly made him shiver in delight. “Nothing happened to her. Once I decided my time there was long enough, I left.”

“The way you talk about it, you seemed happy there.”

“I was. But I never thought it would be permanent.” He shrugged, as if brushing off Jeno’s remark. “I’m immortal. The one thing that cannot kill me, in any form, is aging. I’ll never grow older, and I’ll never grow feeble. So I don’t live with the illusion that I could settle in a mortal’s company. In all likelihood, their life will be only a blip beside mine. No point in becoming too attached.”

It sounded like a terribly sad life to Jeno. Meeting people, then parting with the knowledge that, if you had stayed instead, you might have watched them die someday. He wondered how long ago it was that Renjun had encountered that old woman. Perhaps, by now, she had already passed.

It seemed as though Renjun was thinking the same thing. He’d stopped eating, hunger vanished from his eyes.

“Renjun it is, then,” Jeno said quietly. He turned to reenter the kitchen.

“What about you?” Renjun called after him.

“I’m Jeno.” 

“Jeno,” Renjun repeated. He set his plate aside, as if he might come back to it later, and nestled back down into Jeno’s pillow.

—

At night, it began to snow again. Jeno had hoped that perhaps the blizzard had been a false start that would melt away in a few days' time, and they would be left with a few more mild autumn weeks before winter came for good. That, however, was beginning to seem unlikely. Winter had crashed in suddenly, and permanently.

Jeno redressed Renjun’s wounds again. He felt more comfortable this time cleaning them properly, wiping away all the maroon dried blood where it clung to his skin, letting him examine the injuries more exactly. It seemed his neck was not quite so terrible as it had seemed, with all excess blood gone; it was superficially gory, but the deepest marks of the teeth had missed the windpipe. Bruising had begun at the edges. Breathing and swallowing would be sore, but it would heal.

Renjun’s leg was the bigger concern. The muscle was torn and, as he’d proved earlier when he’d jumped from the counter, he could not put hardly any weight on it without suffering a nasty shock.

“It’s no big deal,” Renjun informed him. He flexed his toes as Jeno held his calf aloft in the air to rewrap it. “This isn’t the worst shape I’ve ever been in. And once I return to my proper form, the wounds will begin to heal much more rapidly.”

“When exactly do you plan to do that?”

“Once it’s been long enough that I’m sure he’s lost my trail.”

“He?”

“Humans ought not be privy to the affairs of spirits.”

Jeno rolled his eyes. The holier-than-thou attitude was beginning to get old, though its edge was dulled by the playful glimmer in Renjun’s eyes.

“Alright,” Jeno said, tapping Renjun’s knee. “You’re all set. Now get out of my bed.”

“What do you mean?” he whined.

“I would like to go to sleep. I’m up early in the morning.”

Renjun crossed his arms like a stubborn child.

“You’re a dog,” Jeno said, smirking. “You can sleep on the floor.”

“I’m not a dog,” Renjun muttered, but he slid out from under the covers anyway and slowly made his way to the rug in front of the hearth. There, he stooped to his knees, sitting back on his feet, and stretched both arms over his head. Jeno hardly noticed Renjun’s nakedness anymore, except for when he did something like that. He watched the line of the boy’s back. He was bony, but in an alluring way, vertebrae visible and shoulder blades sharp. It was strange to notice that someone had a pretty spine, Jeno thought, but Renjun did.

He thought that other parts of Renjun’s body were pretty, too, but tried not to think about them.

Jeno stripped out of his overshirt and work pants, and lay back against his pillow. He retrieved his notepad from his bedside table. Inside it were his sketches from his projects, marked with grid lines and numbers to show their dimensions. He began working out his plan for the next day, but he kept getting distracted by the thought that his pillow, his blankets, smelled just like Renjun.

—

The morning light was not enough to wake Jeno, because a thick layer of ice and snow had coated his bedside window and dimmed the sun’s rays. He rolled out of bed an hour later than usual, fumbling into his clothes and lacing his boots at record speed.

Renjun, lying on the rug, poked his head out from beneath his quilt. “Where are you going?” he asked.

“To the shed. To do some work.”

“You build things?”

“Yeah. Woodwork. Like furniture.”

“Could I come with you?”

Jeno laughed quietly. “You want to watch me work?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t got anything better to do — aside from eating the rest of your licorice. I know you’ve hidden it in the coat closet.”

“Fine.” Jeno walked to the door and pushed aside the curtain that hung over its window. This one was coated, too, but he was able to peer through it well enough to see the wind shaking the pines and the snow being blown from the shed’s roof. “But you may want to put on some clothes. It looks pretty cold.”

“I’ll be fine,” Renjun responded dismissively. He came to the door and nudged Jeno out of the way with his hip. Then he turned the knob and took a step out into the yard.

A lopsided step, because his foot sunk straight through the snow, which swallowed him up to his knee. Jeno could practically see the shiver as it passed over Renjun’s body.

“Ah,” Renjun said. “It is, in fact, cold.”

“Get back inside, dumbass.”

Jeno helped him back up the steps and shut the door against the icy breeze. Renjun rubbed his arms to warm them back up. His cheeks were rose-pink in the pattern of scattered blossoms.

“I’ve never been weak to the cold before,” he huffed, indignant. “And the absolute audacity you have to call a being of my magnitude a ‘dumbass!’ You humans think you’re so clever, don’t you?”

“I wasn’t the one who walked outside naked in the freezing cold,” Jeno said flatly. “And the reason you haven’t been cold before is because you’re used to having fur.” He crossed the room to his dresser and pulled out a shirt, a pair of trousers, and socks. “Here. Come and put these on.”

Renjun grudgingly did as he was told. He slipped the shirt and trousers on, which Jeno then helped him to belt, as they were much too large. All the while, Renjun tugged at the collar of the shirt, pursing his lips.

“It’s too tight,” he complained. “I feel as if I’m being strangled.”

“You are just being dramatic.”

“It’s itchy, too. I don’t know how you wear these all the time.”

“Seeing as I’ve been wearing clothes since I was a baby, you could probably guess I’ve gotten used to it.” Jeno backed away to check his work, straightening the tuck of Renjun’s shirt. “Now, socks. I’ll get you a coat.”

Jeno went to his coat closet and dug into it. The rest of his coats were a bit thinner, meant for autumn or spring; he already wore his heaviest coat snug around his shoulders. His fingers coasted over leather and wool, but stopped when he felt the soft sleeve of a mink fur coat, relegated to the far back of the closet.

He hesitated, then pulled it out. It had collected some dust being untouched for so long. He shook it out on its hanger, brushing the deep brown fur till it shined, and brought it to Renjun.

When he put it on, he turned in it, seeming surprised. “It fits me,” he observed. It was the first thing he’d worn that actually did. “Is this your coat?”

“No,” Jeno said quietly. “Someone left it here.”

“Hmm.” Renjun hummed curiously, but didn’t ask any questions. All he said was, “You’re lucky it’s mink, and not fox, or we’d be having issues.”

Jeno laughed, placed his hand at the small of Renjun’s back, and pushed him towards the door.

They trekked over the long yard to the workshed, whose front door handle was slick with ice. Jeno pulled his sleeve over his hand to turn it, and it made a satisfying crack. Once inside, he lit the gaslamp on the side table. The woodpile that Renjun had toppled the other night was still scattered across the floor. Jeno kicked a log out of his way as he walked to his workbench, where he unfolded a piece of paper from his pocket and laid it out on the tabletop.

“What are you doing?” Renjun asked, stepping carefully over the mess. “Building something?”

Jeno pressed a contemplative finger to his upper lip. “Yeah. Someone wants a pine bench for their porch.” He’d sketched it out the night before, planning its measurements and design.

“Oh.” Without asking, Renjun took the paper from Jeno’s hands and examined the drawing. “You’re good at that kind of thing? Being handy?”

“It’s my job, so I’d hope so.”

“Can I help you?”

Jeno snatched his paper back. “I’d prefer you clean up your mess, first. That would be a bigger help to me.”

Renjun pouted, but complied, stooping to gather the spilled wood. “Making an injured person pick up,” he muttered crossly. “Unbelievable. Such a brute.”

Jeno smiled. Somehow, he found Renjun’s indignance cute.

The sound of sawing filled the shed as Jeno set to work cutting all the boards to length. He did not neglect to notice that, as he worked, Renjun kept pausing to watch him, standing there with his arms full of logs and branches and his eyes on Jeno.

Finally, once he’d haphazardly reassembled the pile (standing on tiptoes to place the smallest pieces precariously at the very top), he sidled around to Jeno’s side of the table, where he hovered near his elbow. Jeno was sanding down the edge of one of the boards, making it smooth and spilling dust onto the floor.

“Pretty,” Renjun said.

“What?” Jeno laughed. “The wood?”

“No. Your hands.”

Jeno stopped sanding. He looked at Renjun.

Renjun reached out and took one of Jeno’s hands in both of his. His fingers pressed into Jeno’s palm, and his thumbs ran up the bones in the back of his hand, tracing their lines. When he reached the knuckles, he tugged Jeno’s fingers apart, turning them carefully in the lamplight.

Jeno held his breath the entire time.

“Pretty,” Renjun repeated, his voice hushed. “Your fingers are so long. But they’re rough, too. They’re strong. I like that.” He raised his face, gazing up into Jeno’s eyes, lips curved in a slight smile.

 _Seducers,_ the man had said.

Jeno pulled his hand away. “Well, they’re rough from working. Maybe I should invest in some lotion.”

Renjun seemed a little disappointed at Jeno’s reaction, and this time gently prodded the back of Jeno’s other hand, on top of its bandage. “What happened here?”

“I was bitten by a fox when I tried to wrangle him from that corner over there,” Jeno responded wryly.

“Ah yes. I do remember that.” Renjun coughed daintily against his fist. “Perhaps that fox was not feeling very friendly at that moment because he was in very much pain.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. And perhaps that fox is sorry for what he did.”

“I guess there would be no way of knowing for sure,” Jeno remarked, “since we can’t ask him.”

“Exactly. So you should just go ahead and accept his maybe-apology.”

Jeno shrugged. “I’m not mad at him, so he doesn’t need to apologize in the first place.” He let his arm touch Renjun’s on top of the table and added gently, abandoning the pretense of the conversation, “No hard feelings.”

Renjun leaned closer, closer, and Jeno was hyper-aware of the mink’s fur coat where it brushed his sleeve, soft and cloaked in an old dream.

—

When they’d gone back inside after Jeno’s work was finished for the day, Renjun had immediately stripped naked.

“There’s no point to wearing them inside,” he’d insisted. “It’s warm in here, and I’m more comfortable without them anyway.”

Jeno did not bother to complain. He was beginning to find that he did not mind it much anymore; if anyone were going to be lounging naked around his house, at least it would be someone easy on the eyes.

Still, when they were leaving for the market the next morning, he made Renjun put the clothes back on. He also gave him a thick fur hat, which Renjun studied with arched brows.

“Why do I have to wear this?” he asked.

“Because of your hair. It isn’t common for humans our age to have silver hair.” _Our age_ was probably not the right phrase — Jeno really had no idea how old Renjun was — but to any outsider, they would both seem to be around twenty years old.

“What’s the big deal?” Renjun said. He pulled the hat on anyway, making sure his hair was tucked into it. “It’s only hair. It’s not as if they’ve never seen silver hair before.”

“I just don’t want to be getting any weird looks, okay? People will be nosy anyway since you’re an outsider. Who knows how they’d react if they found out what you really were.”

This was something that had been worrying Jeno since that very first day, when Renjun had lain quiet on his floor. What if he had needed to take Renjun to a doctor? Would the doctor have taken one look at him and known he wasn’t human? What then? There were superstitious folks, whose fear bordered on reverence, whom Jeno saw as the least threatening; worse were those who didn’t believe in the possibility of something like Renjun who, when confronted by him, might think him an anomaly or a monstrosity. What would they do? Jeno wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.

And so, he pulled the hat down further on Renjun’s head, making sure he was wearing it tight. “Let’s go,” he said, and they walked out into the snow.

Last night, Jeno had cleared his driveway and walkways with the shovel, making it more navigable. Mostly, he’d been worried of how easily Renjun could manage it with his injured leg. Presently, the boy hobbled towards the truck, which Jeno helped him into, letting him prop a hand on his shoulder as he lifted himself onto the raised step of the truckside.

Jeno got in, too, and they pulled out of the driveway and onto the road. He watched Renjun pressing his nose against the clouded glass of the window, round gold eyes reflected in it. Jeno hit the button to lower the window, and Renjun immediately stuck his head out, trying to examine the spinning wheels beneath them and the way the trees whizzed past and disappeared in the distance.

 _Just like a dog,_ Jeno thought, and laughed to himself.

“What’s so funny?” Renjun shouted, above the roar of the wind.

“Nothing. Get back in. It’s freezing.”

Renjun settled back down, pink-cheeked from the cold. Then he propped his boots on the dashboard. Jeno pushed his legs down, but Renjun put them up again.

“Why do you live in the middle of nowhere like this?” he asked.

“Because I like it.”

“You haven’t even got any electricity.”

“Neither do most the people in the village. The electric company doesn’t like to be bothered this far north. Plus, we can live fine without it. It’s an unnecessary expense.” Jeno’s parents’ house had electricity, and though he’d grown up with it, he found he didn’t much miss it. It was so much quieter without it, even in unexpected ways. He’d never realized how loud the buzz of the fridge was, or the faint hum of the wires in the wall, until he’d begun to live without them. The only electric things he kept in his house were those that could be run on batteries.

“Why not just live in the village, then?” Renjun continued. “That way, you’d at least have neighbors. It wouldn’t be so lonely.”

“I like the solitude,” Jeno responded.

“How long is the drive?”

“Twenty-five minutes.”

Renjun groaned impatiently and slumped lower in his seat.

Jeno shoved his feet off the dashboard again.

When they arrived, Jeno deliberately shuffled Renjun out of sight of the bookshop’s storefront, just in case that clever old man happened to sneak a peek at them. Of anyone, he would have been the most likely to recognize Renjun for what he was. Instead, Jeno led Renjun towards the clothier, because it was about time that he found clothes that fit and, more importantly, were not Jeno’s.

Renjun immediately walked over to a shirt he saw hanging on a rack to their left. “How about this one?” he asked, lifting it on its hanger. It was easy to see why it caught his attention — it was a patchwork of bright cloth and golden thread, mashed together with no regard for style or sightlyness.

“It’s certainly… busy,” Jeno remarked.

“All your clothes are so drab. If you’re gonna wear them, why not have them be something fun?”

Before he could run with it up to the counter, Jeno hooked Renjun’s arm and pulled him to another rack. His hair was eye-catching enough; he certainly didn’t need to be looking like the human equivalent of a lost TV signal, too.

Jeno allowed Renjun to choose a couple modest shirts and trousers, as well as some undergarments and a pair of boots. Usually, he was exceptionally frugal, so it killed him a little bit to fork over the funds for a new wardrobe. Renjun watched the exchange at the counter with a crooked, knowing grin.

They exited the store. Jeno wanted to head back to the truck, but Renjun insisted on dragging him through the market stalls so he could peer around at their selection. He seemed particularly attracted to the butcher’s stand, but Jeno did not trust him to not try and steal a sausage right off the counter, so he made sure he stayed a safe distance away.

Regardless, Renjun appeared to be enjoying himself. Even with his bad leg, he moved with a jaunty bounce in his step, and his inquisitive grin put dimples in his cheeks. If anyone in the crowds was looking their way, no one seemed to peg him as an outsider; perhaps just an overexcited teen from out of town.

“I always like this kind of thing,” he said. “Places with lots of people.”

“Really?” Jeno was surprised. He’d figured that someone who spent so much time in the idyllic spread of nature, so far from human intervention, would find the commotion annoying, or even frightening. “Have you spent a lot of time around humans?”

“A little. Every so often, I like to see how humans live. It’s fascinating to me.”

“Oh? What’s fascinating about it?”

“The closeness, I suppose.” Renjun glanced to the side of the road where, upon the front porch of the baker’s shop, a boy and his grandmother were playing a game of chess on a tall table. The boy made a clever move, and his grandmother gave his hair an affectionate ruffle. “Foxes are solitary creatures. We don’t really interact in the same way that humans do.”

Jeno sensed an underlying jealousy. The thought of a being like Renjun, something divine and powerful, wishing he could live like a human was curious to Jeno. “You don’t?”

“No. We spirits have our own rules. Our own way of life.”

“What about relationships between spirits and humans?” Jeno asked. “Are spirits often close to the human world the way that you are?”

“We’ve always been intertwined. In a way, I think we complete each other. Like we’re two different halves of one reality.” He smiled, not his typical smirk, but something more genuine. “Maybe we’re destined to bump into each other and become fond. Maybe we were created for that purpose.”

Jeno raised a brow. “You think so? That’s a romantic perspective on it.”

“No,” Renjun said. “I think it’s a sad one.” And he whisked off ahead of Jeno, little fur-hatted head blending into the crowd.

—

Jeno brought out the bath basin in front of the hearth and filled it with freshly heated water. He allowed Renjun to take his turn first, since he had no idea when the boy had last had a bath. From the edge of his bed, he watched him sink into the steam, letting out a pleased sigh as it submerged him up to his shoulders. It touched the very edge of the wound on his neck which, by this point, was fully closed and close to healing. It didn’t seem to hurt him anymore, just an ugly scar waiting to fade.

“Happy?” Jeno asked.

“Quite happy.” Renjun snuggled down as if the hot water were a blanket. “Reminds me of bathing in the hot springs over the mountainside.”

“You’ve been to a lot of places, haven’t you?”

“Sure. I haven’t much else to do than to travel. And I’ve plenty of time to do it.” Renjun scooped up some of the water in his palms and pressed it into his face, scrubbing at his cheeks.

“Right — the immortality thing,” Jeno recalled. “How old are you, really?”

Renjun shrugged. “I dunno. There’s no need to count the years if they don’t mean anything, is there?”

“Can you at least give me an estimate?”

Renjun held out an arm and watched the water droplets run down it.

Jeno sighed. “Fine. Can I ask a different question, then?”

“Shoot.”

“How was it that you got those injuries? You said it was from another spirit.” Jeno crossed his arms, trying to look serious. Renjun always liked to toy with him; he wanted it to be clear that he was looking for real answers, not evasions.

Renjun noticed, but maintained his cool demeanor. He lifted a leg and propped it on the end of the tub, toes pointed. It exposed his other wound, which had healed more slowly than the other. Just the day before, it had broken into full bleeding again, and Jeno realized why Renjun had taken it from the water — the heat was not agreeing with it, turning it a deep, irritated red.

“That bastard bear,” he murmured, narrowing his eyes. “He’s all bulk, no brains. Let’s say he had ownership over a particular artifact. A very rare artifact. One I would have liked to borrow from him, except he denied me the right. So I tried to steal it from him.” Renjun sunk lower, blowing bubbles into the water like a dragon blowing smoke. He raised his chin to add, “Obviously, it didn’t pan out.”

“What was the artifact?” Jeno asked.

“You wouldn’t understand it. It isn’t something a human should know about.”

Jeno groaned. _Just when I thought I was getting somewhere._

“You really can’t tell me?” he tried. “I just —”

Renjun took a deep breath and submerged his head underwater.

“ _Renjun._ Stop ignoring me.”

When he came back up, he twisted a pinky in his ear to unlodge the water, then leaned back and reached his arms back over the lip of the tub in a seductive stretch. “Wish your tub was bigger,” he said. “Then you could join me.”

Jeno knew that Renjun was dodging the conversation, but he blushed anyway. “No thank you.”

“Actually, I think we could manage it like this. You could get in first, and then I could sit in your lap. It would be very cozy, but that’s the entire point.”

“Just hurry up,” Jeno said dismissively. “We haven’t got all night.” It was a weak retort, but it was easier than admitting that he didn’t mind the idea. In fact, having Renjun naked in his lap was a somehow enchanting thought — the closeness, being able to feel his breath, being able to smell his warm, supple skin. Jeno had not been intimate with someone like that in a long time.

 _That’s it,_ he convinced himself. _You’re just touch-starved, and nothing more. Stop getting funny ideas._

Renjun hummed idly in the tub. His wet hair stuck to his forehead, and a drop of water ran down the side of his neck as if it were sweat.

Jeno lay down on his bed, and turned over so he faced the wall instead.

—

It was an exceptionally lazy day, for Jeno at least. In the morning, he’d worked in his shed, but had been continuously interrupted by yawns too strong to swallow. The past couple weeks had been a whirlwind, and the weight of them crashed on him that day, making him slow and disinterested in anything other than curling up on the sofa with a book with a hot cup of tea.

Renjun, meanwhile, was getting antsy. Jeno could tell the boy was getting tired of being confined for so long indoors. It must have been a tough change, from having the freedom to roam as he wanted, to being stuck in a single-room cabin for days on end. He spent that morning building a house of cards, then getting sick of that and pacing the kitchen while shoving licorice sticks into his mouth, then getting sick of _that_ and settling in front of the window, arms perched on the sill, watching the clouds.

Then, suddenly, around three in the afternoon, he announced, “It’s snowing.”

“Again?” Jeno walked up behind him, parting the curtains to get a better look. “That’ll be fun to shovel in the morning.”

“Let’s go out,” Renjun said, tugging at the bottom of Jeno’s shirt. “Come on.”

“What? In the snow?”

“I always like a pretty snowfall.” He stood, and went to the dresser, beginning to dress. “I haven’t gotten to enjoy any of them this year.”

The first snowfall — the blizzard — was the night he’d been injured, and the second, he’d been too fragile still to enjoy it. Now, his face broke into a giddy smile as he slipped on the mink fur coat and leather boots, and Jeno couldn’t resist the urge to join him. He wanted to see Renjun in his element; he was an arctic fox, after all. He was built for the snow. It was his home.

And, like it was his homecoming, he danced out into it, spinning beneath the spiraling flakes. Jeno watched from the doorstep, face softening at the sight of it. Renjun threw his head back, opening his mouth to catch the snow on his tongue as if he were a child.

“Jeno,” he called. “Come on.”

Jeno traipsed down the steps, snow crunching under his feet. He stood next to Renjun, and they both stared ahead to where a mountain rose in the distance, capped in blue ice. Below it stretched the forest, the forest Renjun had come from, densely populated by pines and firs. In the snow and bright afternoon sunlight, it looked picturesque, like an image from a postcard.

“You see that?” Renjun said, sweeping his arm over it. “That’s where I belong. I was born out of it. Me and that land — we’re linked, like this.” He meshed his fingers, locking them together.

Jeno didn’t understand the connection between spirits and nature, at least not completely. It sounded like they were tied to it innately, but floating above it at the same time. Renjun had said that Jeno wouldn’t understand something like the artifact he sought — and maybe he was right. Maybe, Jeno couldn’t understand a spirit, without being able to live that life.

“Do you miss it?” he asked.

“Miss it?” Renjun tilted his head in consideration. “I miss sleeping under the stars, I suppose. But you live so close to it — if I were to hole up with any human, I’m glad it’s one who can see the forest from his house.”

Jeno smiled. There were times he didn’t like being so separate from the rest of society. But if it had brought Renjun to him, he was glad of it.

“You can go back anytime,” he reminded Renjun. “I bet it’s waiting for you to return to it.”

“I will when I want. It isn’t as if it’ll pack up on me and move away.”

Jeno laughed, though he felt sad, too. When Renjun left, it would be just him again. The spot on the rug in front of the hearth would seem empty without Renjun’s lithe little body curled up on it.

There was a flash of white, and a burst of cold against Jeno’s face. He stumbled backwards, shaking his head, and when he looked up, he saw Renjun’s hand swinging downward from the follow-through of his throw and an effervescent giggle on his lips.

“ _Hey_ ,” Jeno said. “What was that for?”

“What do you mean?” Renjun asked, clutching his stomach as if the giggles tickled him from the inside. “It’s a snowball. It’s _for fun._ ”

“You should have given me a warning.”

“Half the fun is in the surprise.”

Jeno stooped over and scraped together a snowball of his own, packing it together tightly. Renjun had already begun running in the other direction, covering his head with his hands. Jeno launched his snowball, and it hit Renjun in the back, shattering with a thump.

“You’ve done it now, human.” Renjun whipped around, squaring his small shoulders. “You have incurred my wrath.”

“Just what I was hoping for.”

“Prepare yourself.” Renjun took a massive armful of snow, and began to chase Jeno around the yard. Jeno’s legs were longer, so he should have been able to evade him; but part of him wanted to let Renjun get his revenge, that way the game could continue on. He slowed, and Renjun yanked down the back of his coat and dumped the snow down it, freezing against his back. Jeno yelped, shivered, then retaliated, grabbing another fistful of snow and shoving it right in Renjun’s face.

They were both laughing, and Jeno felt like a child again. He tried to memorize the moment — Renjun’s bright red nose and cheeks, his crinkled eyes, the pale flakes stuck in his pale hair.

“Truce?” Jeno offered.

“No way,” Renjun responded. He was already rolling another snowball. “We’ve got all day, don’t we?”

—

The cold dark blue of the night sky hung in the window next to the vibrant red warmth of the hearth. Renjun lay on his rug as he often did, though the snow from their fight had melted from his hair and eyelashes a few hours ago, and the flickering flames made the gold of his eyes firespun and glitter-woven.

Jeno, tuckered out, lay in his bed, scribbling in his notebook but only half paying attention. His eyes kept sliding back to Renjun. The boy’s bare chest gently rose and fell, one of his small hands resting atop it. Unlike Jeno’s hands, Renjun’s were delicate, drawn from slight angles and soft light, always elegant and poised. Jeno was reminded again, as he had been the first time he’d seen Renjun, of a marble statue. If Jeno were to touch him, it seemed as if his skin would be cool as stone. As if he wasn’t quite human, because no one who looked that lovely could be.

 _And he isn’t human,_ Jeno told himself. _He’s not even from this world, really._

He dragged his gaze back to his notebook.

There was a fumbling sound, and when he looked up again, Renjun was kneeling at the edge of his bed, chin propped on the edge of the mattress.

“What are you doing?” Jeno asked.

“I’m cold,” Renjun said. “You should let me sleep in your bed.”

Jeno cocked a brow. “Cold right next to the fire?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Jeno licked his lips and rubbed the corner of the notebook page between his fingers. The hearth crackled, and spit out a glowing yellow speck.

Jeno scooted over, just a few inches.

Renjun smiled against the blankets, then lifted himself up onto the bed. He curled the lower half of his body by Jeno’s feet like a cat, but stretched his torso towards the pillows. His head, which he rested on top of his folded arms, was by Jeno’s hip.

It was quiet again. Jeno resumed his sketch — a set of oak dining chairs with pretty, decorative splats that had been commissioned when they’d gone to town earlier that week. He found it easier to focus now, as he listened to the soft whooshing of Renjun’s breath as he danced on the edge of sleep. The domesticity of the moment struck him. They’d become comfortable around each other now, as if Renjun had been living there for more than just half a month. Jeno hadn’t minded the loneliness; he’d become numb to it the same way one became numb to the cold, once they stood out in it for long enough. There had been a short time where he’d considered getting a pet, maybe a dog, to keep him company. But what would a dog do when Jeno shut himself in the shed to work for hours at a time? Besides, Jeno thought that, after everything, maybe he was too selfish to love someone properly.

But as they lay on his bed, Jeno found it easy to forget those thoughts. He looked at Renjun’s face, closed-eyed and content at his side.

Then he reached out, and placed his hand on Renjun’s head, petting his hair. The last time he’d done that, Renjun had growled at him; now, his lips twitched in a small smile, and he leaned into Jeno’s touch, begging for attention. Jeno, more sure of himself, pushed Renjun’s hair back from his forehead, dragging his fingers through the silky silver locks and watching them shine white in the firelight.

Renjun sat up. He took Jeno’s hand from his head and pulled it down, pressing his mouth against Jeno’s fingertips. He was not cold like marble. His lips were so warm they almost burned, moving in slow, aching kisses. Jeno felt the barest hint of his tongue.

He dropped his notebook onto his bed, took Renjun’s face in his hands, and kissed him hard on the mouth. He felt Renjun take in a sharp breath through his nose, his excitement tangible and uncontrollable. Renjun’s lips parted, letting Jeno in, deepening the kiss. The hair on the back of Jeno’s neck rose with a pleased prickle. He kissed Renjun again, slowly, trying to savor the taste of him. He was sweet as licorice.

Jeno’s hands fell lower, and his mouth did, too, sucking at the pale white of Renjun’s throat, just above his scar. He felt a low rumble pass through it, a gravel-rough moan, while Renjun’s hand caressed the back of his head, guiding him lower still and demanding more. His tongue slid down Renjun’s chest, tracing goosebumps, teasing his nipple. The moan broke into a whimper, and Jeno took a little pride in making Renjun unravel — at stealing the cocky, clever words that had always seemed to come so easy right out of his mouth. He gripped Renjun’s thigh, calloused palms against soft flesh. It was exhilarating, being able to touch his body after being forced to simply look at it for so long. He’d always thought Renjun’s body pretty, but thought it prettier when it was pliant and needy under his hands.

Then Renjun yanked Jeno by his hair, turning his face up again so he could kiss him. The assertiveness was a definite, unexpected turn-on and, compounded with the way Renjun was gently biting Jeno’s bottom lip, it had Jeno seeing stars.

“So you’re going to seduce me, after all,” Jeno murmured through his daze.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Nothing.”

Renjun climbed into his lap, grinning a sharp-toothed grin as he felt Jeno’s erection through the covers, and shoved his hand beneath the waistband of Jeno’s pants.

—

In the morning, the fire was low, the sunlight pale gray, and breakfast burnt.

It had begun with Jeno maneuvering out of bed as carefully as he could, trying not to wake Renjun as he still slept with his cheek against the pillow. Jeno had allowed himself the risk of pressing a quick kiss to the top of Renjun’s head, then he’d dressed and went into the kitchen, setting a frying pan on the top of his woodstove and letting it heat up. Once it was hot enough, he’d cracked a few eggs into it, which made a satisfying crackle when they’d hit the cast iron. Just a few seconds later, Renjun had woken, perhaps at the smell of food, and come up behind Jeno and wrapped his arms around his middle, squeezing him in a tight hug. Jeno had scraped at the bottom of the pan with his spatula. Renjun had stood tiptoe and kissed Jeno behind his ear.

“Hold on a minute,” Jeno had said, wriggling from Renjun’s embrace. “Let me just flip these over.”

Renjun had not been content with being ignored. He’d slipped his hands under Jeno’s shirt, running them up his back, and when that hadn’t worked, he’d resorted to sinking to his knees, tugging on the belt loops of Jeno’s trousers to turn him, and unzipping their front.

“Renjun —” Jeno had begun.

Renjun had taken him in his mouth, slow and warm and starving. Jeno had gasped, and dropped his spatula onto the floor so he could work his fingers into Renjun’s hair.

The eggs had gone forgotten, blackened. Still, neither complained as they ate them afterwards at the tiny kitchen table, knees bumping underneath.

At the touch, Jeno remembered to ask, “Renjun. How’s your leg now?”

“Good. It barely hurts anymore.” He sipped at his glass of water, trying to wash down their burnt breakfast.

“I guess you’ll be leaving soon, then? It’s been a few weeks. The bear couldn’t still be hunting after you, could he?”

Renjun set his glass on the table with a hard thud. “Why? Do you want me to leave?”

“No. I thought _you_ wanted to leave.”

He lost his edge, and instead traced his finger slowly along the lip of the glass, his expression a mixture of happiness and something else. Jeno couldn’t guess if it was shame, fear, or regret. Like what Jeno had said had been true at one point, but had become more complicated. “I suppose I’m content to stay here, for now,” Renjun finally answered.

“But you’ll leave eventually,” Jeno predicted.

“I don’t know.”

“Why do you have to?”

It was a strange conversation to be having on a peaceful morning, one still love-tinted from the night before. Even though there was a tension hanging in the air, Jeno was watching Renjun’s face, wondering how he’d garnered the luck to come across someone so beautiful and intelligent and vividly-detailed, like every step he took kicked up a spark.

“I’m not human,” Renjun said. “We’re not compatible. Not in the long-term.”

Jeno reached across the table, turning over Renjun’s hand so he could rub his thumb against its palm and the fine, intricate lines that composed it. “You’re talking about your immortality.”

“Yes.” Renjun studied their hands as if trying to memorize them; the rough touch of a carpenter, the soft, moonglow-born skin of a spirit. “There are only two ways for me to die. If someone killed me, or if I killed myself. Neither sound very enticing, do they?” He laughed miserably. “Jeno. In twenty years, your life will be halfway over. You’ll be beginning to go gray. You’ll begin to lose strength. In sixty years, let’s say — you’ll be an old man. But through all those years, I’ll look like this. I won’t get any older. I won’t age with you. And when you die, I’ll persist.”

“I know,” Jeno said.

“You don’t want that.”

Jeno wondered if Renjun had ever had to watch a human die. Maybe it was a human he had loved. Jeno’s finger ghosted over the vein in Renjun’s wrist, wondering what it must feel like to know that your blood would never run dry; it would keep flowing forever, unless it was spilt over the floor.

Jeno didn’t know what to say. Renjun was right. He couldn’t conceive of a future with someone who wouldn’t grow up with him. Ever since he was a child, he’d been taught to want what every person was taught to want — a sweetheart they’d marry, a little house in town, two or three well-behaved children to take care of you once you were too old to take care of them. Then you would die in your sweetheart’s arms, or the other way around, and whoever was left behind would follow shortly after, because losing your love was effectively your death, too.

Part of Jeno still wanted that romanticized future. Another part of him had realized long ago that some of that would never be in the cards for him — the marriage, the children — and if so, did it matter that he wouldn’t have the rest of it, either?

He let go of Renjun’s hand.

“I’ll have to think about it,” he said. “Maybe I do want it. Maybe I don’t. I don’t know.”

“Okay.” Renjun was satisfied at this, for now. He seemed to know better than to hope for an easy answer. He’d lived for a long time. He knew how to be patient.

“Unless you want to end it,” Jeno added. “It’s your choice, too.”

“I don’t know, either,” Renjun admitted. “I don’t know if settling with a human is what’s best for me. Every time, it feels like a mistake.”

 _Every time._ The suggestion, again, that Renjun had left someone behind. Maybe many people.

And he might leave Jeno behind, too. Jeno winced at the thought. It had already happened to him once — he wasn’t sure he would survive it a second time.

“Then why do you keep doing it?” Jeno asked.

Renjun straightened up in his chair, bearing his little fangs in a crooked smile that meant he was about to lighten the mood. “Love-making among foxes is a rather business-like affair. I much prefer the way you humans go about it.”

Jeno broke into a laugh. He stood, picked up their plates, and bent to press a kiss to Renjun’s lips.

—

Renjun was wearing the mink fur coat again. Jeno, like always, stared. The way it hugged his shoulders made him look like someone else. Like someone Jeno had tried, on many occasions, to burn the memory of, crumpling it in his mind like a photograph, tearing it to bits, and tossing them into the fire. But when he looked at Renjun in that coat, the memory rebuilt itself. It would never leave him alone.

They were walking through the woods near Jeno’s house. The sun was out, which meant it was warmer than it had been the past few days. Jeno was sweating beneath his winter clothes. Renjun, meanwhile, did not seem to mind it. He basked in the sunlight as it dodged through the trees, eyes shut and face turned up towards it.

“I love it like this,” he said, voice crisp and clear in the cold air. As he walked, he reached up and let his fingers brush the lowest branches above their heads. The snow that had stuck to them fluttered down, dusting his cheeks like white freckles.

“Yeah. It’s a nice day,” Jeno responded distractedly. Some of the flakes had caught in the fur at Renjun’s shoulders. He wanted to wipe it away, but didn’t want to feel that mink fur. As if the mere touch would burn him. Even just looking at it, it seemed to, evoking a dull pain and a dull heat in his face.

They approached the brook, which was frozen over, though the sun had melted some of its uppermost layer, making it slick and shiny. Renjun crouched beside it. “Do you ever come here and fish during the summer?” he asked.

“Sometimes,” Jeno said.

“Funny. I come here a lot, too. We could have run into each other — not that you’d have known I was anything but a fox.” He looked up at Jeno, breath puffing in white billows. It muddled his face. “How long have you lived in that cabin, Jeno?”

“About two years.”

“All on your lonesome?”

Jeno shifted his weight, and it made him unbalanced, one foot stumbling awkwardly in the snow.

“Are you alright?” Renjun’s eyes rounded. He stood and placed a hand on Jeno’s arm.

“What do you mean?”

“Your face is all red. Do you feel sick?” He placed a cool hand on Jeno’s forehead. “You’re on fire.”

Jeno ducked away from his touch, face going even redder in embarrassment. “I’m fine.”

“I think you’re sick. Let’s go back.” Renjun looped Jeno’s arm over his shoulders to support him, and they began trekking back towards the cabin. Above their heads, a crimson cardinal perched on a pine branch, singing softly into the breeze. It usually would have been lovely, but right then, its high whistle was too sharp on Jeno’s ears.

“Don’t get too close,” he warned Renjun. “You’ll catch it, too.”

“I can’t get sick, seeing as I’m not actually human, but I appreciate the sentiment.”

Renjun shoved open the front door with his foot. It struck the wall behind it with a bang. He stripped Jeno of his coat and dragged him to his bed, gently laying him down across it. There, he brushed Jeno’s hair from his face and felt the sweat where it had begun to bead. He walked to the kitchen, wet a rag, then returned and mopped Jeno’s brow.

“You don’t have to take care of me,” Jeno said.

“I do. You did it for me, not even knowing who I was.” An affectionate glimmer rose in his eyes. He brushed his thumb across Jeno’s cheek. “Oh wow. You’re warmer than a furnace. Why didn’t you say anything?”

Jeno sighed, chest deflating beneath Renjun’s hands as he began to undo the buttons on his shirt. “I don’t know. I guess I just thought it was stress.”

“Stress?”

Jeno shut his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose between his fingers. His vision had begun to go fuzzy, the room spinning around him. He was tethered to earth by Renjun’s touch as he still worked at his shirt, unbuttoning it all the way down and pulling it off of Jeno’s shoulders. He rolled him onto his side, and slipped the shirt away from underneath him. There was a pleasant, welcome cool as Renjun took to his neck and collarbone with the damp rag.

“Just — us, not having things figured out…” Jeno croaked. His throat had begun to ache, each word scratching against it.

“I’m sorry,” Renjun said. His figure was distorted, and darkened into a silhouette by the firelight. He was still wearing the mink fur coat.

“Can you take that off?”

“What?”

“The coat.”

Puzzled, Renjun fingered its collar, stroking the plush brown fur. “Why?”

“It makes you look like him.”

Renjun leaned in closer. “Who’s ‘him?’” he whispered.

“Donghyuck.”

“Donghyuck?”

“The boy I used to love.”

A look of surprise registered on Renjun’s face. Quickly, he removed the coat and laid it over the bedside stand. “We don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to,” he said.

Jeno would usually have clammed up. He would have shoved the subject away because it still stung, unhealed. But he was sick, and a little delirious from the heat, and part of him wanted to finally talk about it. It would be the first time he ever did, with anyone.

“It was a while ago,” he said. Across the room, he could see the flames in the hearth, swirling and rippling like a mirage. “We moved out here together. Just the two of us. We were so happy…”

Renjun continued to tend to him, unzipping his trousers and pulling them off. It allowed the heat to escape, letting him breathe. “What happened?”

“We moved so far from town, because I thought it would be better that way. It would have been hard for us otherwise. People might have looked at us strangely…” Jeno swallowed and shut his eyes. He remembered the beginning of it all. They’d met when they were just fourteen. Both their fathers were sailors, and Donghyuck’s father had recently been relocated to Jeno’s little harbor town. It had been hard not to fall for the new boy, who’d always left his shirt untucked despite the protests from their teachers, who’d always insisted that Jeno carry him piggyback up the hill on their way to school. They had kissed for the first time at age sixteen, sitting on Jeno’s back porch while the sun set on the sea. Donghyuck had been the one to initiate it, holding Jeno’s chin in his hand and placing an exaggerated smooch on his lips. Jeno had thought it was a joke at first, until he’d worked up the courage to kiss Donghyuck back, and then he’d felt the gentle press of Donghyuck’s tongue and his heart had caught fire.

Jeno had broken away to peer through the window, to make sure his parents hadn’t seen.

At eighteen, a month after they graduated high school, Jeno had asked Donghyuck to move in with him.

“It would just be the two of us,” he’d explained. “We could buy a house, somewhere quiet.”

“Quiet?” Donghyuck had echoed.

“Yeah. Just… some place where we can be on our own.”

He’d seen the skeptical look in Donghyuck’s eyes. Donghyuck was a people’s person. He thrived on conversation and bustle and new faces. Moreover, he did not like keeping secrets. Especially not secrets about himself. He did not want to hide who he was.

But Jeno had been afraid of what people would think. So he’d ignored that skeptical glance, and eventually, Donghyuck had broken down and agreed.

They’d moved into the cabin by the woods. At first, they’d been perfectly happy. Donghyuck had had his corner of the shed, where Jeno now kept the stack of wood. He’d had his pottery wheel and his shelves of paint and glaze beneath the window, and he and Jeno would work at the same time, content in the easy quiet. Making his ceramics was the time that Donghyuck was most calm, most focused. His eyes would narrow and his hands would take on a new surety when they touched the cold clay.

(Jeno would always remember the time he’d ambled down the school hallway and heard a faraway whirring from the art room. He’d ducked his head around the doorway and watched Donghyuck in there, alone and so different from the Donghyuck he’d thought he knew: intense, careful, with a deliberate lightness in his hands. That was the moment he’d first realized he’d wanted Donghyuck’s hands on him.)

His favorite memory was of a night in the harshest days of winter, when he and Donghyuck had opened a bottle of cheap red wine and put on music as snow piled outside. But they’d been safe by the fire, tipsy and dancing to a record Donghyuck had put on. Donghyuck had known all the words, but alcohol-addled, he’d sung along, with misplaced confidence, in an unintelligible mumbling that had made Jeno laugh so hard it hurt. He’d looped his arms around Donghyuck’s neck and kissed him, wondering if he’d been worrying over nothing the whole time.

The snow had melted. Donghyuck had been itching for freedom, and once the world had opened back up around him, it had been as if he could not resist it.

They’d visited home for a week, at Donghyuck’s request. Jeno had still been cagey with his parents about the details, insisting he’d needed the cabin for the workspace, and that Donghyuck had joined him there for the same reason. They’d seemed to accept it. Jeno had sighed in relief, but felt a cool sweat at the back of his neck all the same.

When they’d returned to the cabin, it was only one day before things began to change.

“I was thinking,” Donghyuck had said casually, over their morning coffee, “about moving back home for a while.”

“Oh,” was all Jeno had responded.

“Just for a little bit. I don’t know. I think maybe I’m getting a bit of cabin fever.”

Cabin fever. He’d meant it lightly, but by the end of things, Jeno was convinced that might have been the truth. They had begun to argue with worrying frequency, over stupid things: Jeno spending too much time on his work, Donghyuck spending too much money on a meticulously-detailed model ship to place on the fireplace mantle, whether or not they should rearrange the living room space so the couch was nearer the window. That last argument had somehow become so heated that Donghyuck had cried and refused to sleep in their bed. He'd slept on the couch instead (by the window — Jeno had won), and the close quarters of their single room had meant that they were still forced to look at each other. Only a few feet apart, yet it had felt like a million miles.

Summer had come. It ended with a fight in the shed, after several hours of quiet work that broke into sudden, unrestrained anger.

“I can’t do this anymore,” Donghyuck had said. “I can’t stand it here. I’m losing my fucking mind. And you don’t even care.”

“I do,” Jeno had tried to assure him. “I do care.”

“Then why don’t you listen to me? I feel so isolated. All we do is fight, and I can’t even talk to someone else about it, because you’re the only other fucking person in a fifteen mile radius.”

Jeno had hesitated. He’d never needed anyone else beside Donghyuck. Maybe that was why it had been so much easier for him. He'd known that not everyone could be happy like that, but he’d still been hurt to hear Donghyuck say it.

Bitterly, to hide that hurt, he’d hurled back, “If you really loved me, it wouldn’t matter. If you really loved me, you’d be willing to make sacrifices for me. That’s what a relationship is all about.”

“If _you_ really loved _me_ ,” Donghyuck had retorted, “you wouldn’t be so afraid to tell them about me. And then we wouldn’t be in this whole mess in the first place.”

They’d gone back and forth into the evening, not stopping until the moment that Donghyuck had taken one of his ceramic vases and smashed it on the workshed floor.

He’d packed his things and left the next morning. The only piece of him that remained was his mink fur coat in the closet, which had been forgotten in the warm summer. Jeno had never been able to bring himself to throw it out.

He stared at it on his bedside stand, watching the firelight shine off of it, wishing he’d had the guts to burn it.

Renjun had listened quietly as Jeno had recounted the story, gaze gentle and contemplative and patient. Now, as Jeno took in a deep breath, he asked, “Do you miss him?”

“Yes,” Jeno said.

“Do you ever wish I was him?”

Jeno, with all the strength he had left, grabbed Renjun’s hand at the side of the bed and squeezed it. “Of course I don’t.”

Renjun smiled. Jeno realized he loved him, and it wasn’t just the fever talking; he knew that when he was well and clear-minded, he would still feel the same, and there was an incredible comfort in that.

“Alright,” Renjun whispered. “You need to rest now. We can talk again later.”

Jeno produced a weak, assenting grunt. Renjun pulled the thin sheet up to Jeno’s shoulders, then folded and placed the cool rag on his forehead.

Jeno’s eyes fluttered shut again, and in a matter of seconds, he was asleep.

—

Light, movement, silence. Jeno was only aware of these three things as he slipped in and out of consciousness, his vision clouded and his brain foggy. He’d thought maybe it was just a bad cold, or something stress-induced as he’d said, but he couldn’t remember ever being so sick before. His fingers were prickling, like they were filled with electric static instead of blood. It almost tickled, and he giggled dizzily at the sensation.

“What are you laughing at?” he heard Renjun ask wryly from somewhere nearby.

“I don’t know.”

The sleepiness consumed him again.

The next thing he felt was a shock of a cold breeze hitting him, as though the door had opened and a gust of wind had pushed through it, pointed and brutal like a chisel against Jeno’s body. He tossed and turned, pulling his sheet more tightly around himself. The fever had been replaced by chills.

“Renjun,” he called.

There was no answer. He opened his eyes, and the room shifted unnervingly. He couldn’t see Renjun anywhere.

His heart thumped nervously and his teeth chattered. He swung one leg over the bed as if he might get up and find Renjun, but that simple movement alone drained his whole body of what energy it had left. He was left completely empty, completely alone.

He turned his head, and he thought he could see the figure of Donghyuck, lying on the couch, glaring at him.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Donghyuck got up and cast Jeno one last look, so hate-filled that it stabbed through Jeno like a knife, and he winced. Donghyuck walked to the door and swung it open. He was leaving again. He was leaving Jeno behind.

Jeno blinked, and realized that the door was actually open. The cold burst hit him again, and for a moment he thought it had opened on its own, because he couldn’t see anyone standing on the other side.

His gaze flickered lower, and he saw a little white fox on his doorstep with a wrapped bundle in its mouth.

It plodded across the wood floor and leapt up onto Jeno’s bed, dropping its bundle beside him. Then, it leapt back off, and the next second, Renjun was standing there, pale and naked and even more ethereal looking than usual filtered through Jeno’s stupor.

He unwrapped the bundle, revealing a fine, dark powder. “Open your mouth,” he told Jeno.

Jeno was still so surprised by his sudden reappearance that he simply stared up at him, wondering if it was even real.

“Come on, silly. It’s an herbal medicine, from a healing spirit. It’ll make you feel better.” He placed a hand at the back of Jeno’s head to prop him up, and tilted the packet of powder to his lips. Jeno reluctantly took it in, spluttering at the bitterness. Renjun got him a glass of water to wash it down, then laid him back against the pillow and checked his temperature.

“Oh — you’re completely frozen.” Guiltily, he rubbed Jeno’s cheek with the back of his hand as if trying to will some color back into it. “I’m sorry. I went as fast as I could. But you’ll be okay now.”

“I thought you left me,” Jeno murmured.

Renjun’s brows arched. “Leave you? I wouldn’t do that.”

Jeno pressed his lips together, sealing away a sob.

“I won’t leave you,” Renjun insisted. “I promise.”

He got into bed beside Jeno, curling into his side, offering his warmth. His dulcet hum filled the air like a lullaby, trying to calm Jeno back down into sleep.

Jeno felt the chills recede, starting in the place where Renjun’s hand rested over top of his heart.

—

Jeno could smell the salt off the sea. Even with the windows rolled up, it permeated the air. When he raised his head and stared out the top of the windshield next to the rearview mirror, he could see the yellow sun hovering above a glittering expanse of water, and at its edge, a collection of white houses and fence-lined roads that made up his hometown.

It had been his idea to visit. He hadn’t been back in a very long time, but after telling Renjun about Donghyuck, he realized that some things could not be avoided forever. Besides that, Renjun was eternally interested in how humans lived, and presently, he was staring out the passenger’s side window, finger against the glass, tracing the shapes of the buildings in the distance.

They parked the truck in the lot behind the hotel, and took their bags up to their room. It was simple, with nothing more than a double-bed and a dark wood dresser against one wall. Its window faced the harbor, and the breeze that blew in made the pale curtains flutter like flags. It was not so cold here since it was further south; the wind was nippy, but not unpleasant. Renjun approached, placing both palms down on the sill, breathing in deeply.

“It’s nice here,” he said. “This is where you grew up?”

“Yeah.” Jeno peered out over Renjun’s shoulder. “If you look up the hill over there — that’s my old school. I had to walk up and down the hill to class every day.” He pointed in the opposite direction, where the houses became thickly knit at the bottom of the slope, which bottomed out in a sort of bowl. The hotel perched on its side, looking down at the village center.

“It’s cute,” Renjun murmured. “Right by the sea, too. Did you swim a lot when you were little?”

“Of course I did. There’s a beach to the east of the port.”

“I like it. It’s a lot different from the mountains.”

The breeze caught in Renjun’s hair, his silvery bangs drifting above his forehead like down feathers. Jeno leaned down and kissed him at his brow, which Renjun was not content with; he took Jeno’s face in his hands and pulled him down for a proper kiss on the lips. They stumbled back against the curtain, and it wrapped at their feet. Another strong gust, and its frilled edge buffeted against Renjun’s cheek, and he broke the kiss with a giggle.

“You know,” he said slyly. “It’s still early. I know you wanted to go downtown and do some shopping, but since we’re here…” He gestured towards the bed. “Maybe we should save it for a little later?”

Jeno snorted. “You are the absolute horniest person I’ve ever met.”

“I thought you liked that about me.”

Jeno slipped his arms around Renjun’s middle and lifted him off the floor. “I’m not complaining,” he said, and carried him over to the bed.

The duvet puffed under Renjun’s back as it hit the mattress. He stole another kiss and worked his hands under Jeno’s shirt, turned on at the feel of the hard muscle of his abdomen. Jeno knelt to pull his shirt off, throwing it onto the floor. Renjun greedily tugged him back down, putting his hands over Jeno’s and placing them where he wanted them on either side of his waist. Jeno remembered how Renjun loved his hands, and pressed his rough palms against Renjun’s stomach, knowing it would be the exact thing to drive him wild. He let the touch linger in that one spot, making Renjun wait. _He_ could be a tease, too.

As predicted, Renjun arched his body into the touch, hips raising to grind against the front of Jeno’s trousers, making his wanting evident. Their lips reconnected. Renjun’s fingers curled at the nape of Jeno’s neck, and his mouth followed, canines ghosting against its side.

“Don’t go biting me again,” Jeno murmured, laced with a laugh.

Renjun pulled him lower and growled against his ear, “Then just fuck me already.”

Jeno did not need to be told twice.

—

After cleaning up, they lounged in bed for the first half of the afternoon, watching the harbor outside the window. Jeno had felt a bit of unease at being home, but now he barely noticed it, too wrapped up in Renjun’s golden eyes and they way he was lazily combing Jeno’s hair with his fingers. Sex had worn Renjun out, but apparently not so much that it kept him from kisses, because his lips were still busy, pecking Jeno at the mouth and cheek and jaw and forehead and then his mouth again.

Finally, Jeno sat up and scooted to the edge of the bed, ignoring Renjun’s groan at the injustice. “We can’t do this all day,” he said. “We were going to go downtown, remember?”

“But why would we do that when we could just make out for the rest of the day and then have sex again at night?”

“That is very, very ambitious of you, and I’m afraid it’s an ambition I cannot match.”

Renjun humphed, and began to pull on his pants.

The market there was more colorful than the one in the mountain village. Shops bore blue-striped awnings over their doors and hung pine wreaths and kissing balls from their windows. Jeno could remember many of the shops from his childhood — the patisserie, the gold and silver trader, the toy shop where his parents had taken him every birthday to pick his present. Some of the stores, however, were new. Jeno guessed they must have sprung up during his absence, and they seemed out of place, their signs too freshly painted. He tried to imagine the downtown before he’d left, but found the image of it was faded. It was being replaced by the present. Jeno grudgingly relinquished that memory; if there was one thing he’d learned lately, it was that there was no use clinging to the past, when the future was standing right in front of him, patient and open-armed.

A stand on the corner caught Renjun’s attention. He dragged Jeno over to it, and he saw that they were leather goods, like jackets and gloves, hanging on silver hooks.

“Look,” Renjun said. “They have dog collars.” He waggled a brow. “What do you think?”

“You can’t be serious,” Jeno whispered, hoping no one was watching them. “You’d really wear that kind of thing?”

“Who said anything about _me_ wearing it?” He took one from its hook and folded it on itself. Then he quickly pulled it so it parted, and snapped it back together, making a sound like the crack of a whip. “I thought maybe _you_ would like to give it a try.”

Jeno took it from him and replaced it on the hook. “Don’t say that in public,” he hissed, ears pink, and herded Renjun back in the other direction.

They strolled down the sidewalk, not holding hands but nearly shoulder-to-shoulder. Lost in the crowd, Jeno noticed the ease with which they escaped attention, how everyone was absorbed in their own worlds and their own conversations. He would have feared walking that street with Donghyuck by his side; and he thought, for the first time, that he could see how silly he must have looked from Donghyuck’s point of view, so afraid of loving openly that it had kept them from even the most simple of pleasures.

“Renjun,” he said, tapping him on the shoulder. “Want to stop in here?” It was the old antique shop. He remembered going there once with his mother when he was nine and digging through the basket of foreign coins. They’d come from all over the world, in languages he hadn’t been able to recognize, with unfamiliar busts embossed on their sides. It was the first time he’d realized how big the world was. And now he knew it to be even bigger than he’d thought possible, because there was another layer over top of it, one where spirits dwelled.

“An antique shop?” Renjun cupped his hands around his eyes and pressed them to the shop window, trying to peer inside.

“Yeah. I thought you would think it’s interesting — there are all kinds of human artifacts in there. Old ones. You might not have ever seen some of that stuff.”

Seemingly excited at the prospect, Renjun pushed open the door and they walked into the dimly-lit shop. It was a jumble of objects, stacked on shelves, stacked on top of each other. The aisles were so close together that Jeno was afraid he might bump into them and topple the entire store’s stock.

Rusted brass scales, faded maps, a sailor’s uniform a century old displayed on a yellowed mannequin. Jeno passed among them, head tilted back to take everything in. He almost didn’t notice that Renjun had abandoned him at some point, having taken an interest in a collection of carved animal figurines that looked like they might have once been children’s toys, though they’d since lost their paint. He held a little wooden fox, grinning at the detail in its whiskers.

Silently, Jeno slunk away from him to the back of the store. There was a display case for the more expensive items — guns, watches, extravagant necklaces. Jeno leaned over them, searching, and unexpectedly found his heart beating fast.

“Are you looking for something?” A young woman stepped out from the back room, approaching the other side of the counter.

“Oh.” Jeno nearly answered, _I’m fine,_ but instead surprised himself by saying, “Do you have any rings?”

“Sure.” She pulled a bowl from under the counter and set it on top. “These ones are our cheaper ones. But they’re all real gold.”

“Thanks.” Jeno began to rifle through them, turning them beneath the hanging bulb above his head. He tested them by sliding them onto his pinky, and seeing which fit the snuggest there. He went through half the bowl before finding a thin, pretty ring that still had its gleam, the same gold as Renjun’s eyes.

“I’ll take this one,” he told the woman, sliding the ring across the counter.

—

In the evening, they walked under the rows of street lamps that lined the harborside. Jeno remembered when he and Donghyuck used to do that same thing after school, loitering by the pier and perching on the wooden benches, watching the ships move in and out of their docks. Whenever a large steamship would pass, Donghyuck would take off his hat and wave it, chasing the boat to the very end of the port, whooping and shouting in an attempt to provoke a horn blow. If he succeeded, he would jump for joy, then pick Jeno up and sling him over his shoulder like a sack of flour, and Jeno would laugh as the blood rushed to his head.

Now, there were not many boats moving in the night. It was a dark navy sky, turning the water into black oil. The moon made the waves silver-foiled, and made Renjun’s skin glow like a light shone through an icicle, so beautiful it was blinding. He’d taken off his hat, as they were the only two by the harbor, fair hair haloed by stars.

Jeno slipped his hand into Renjun’s, no longer able to bear not being close to him.

“Jeno,” Renjun murmured. He sounded sleepy, even though he had been the one to ask to stay out later. Jeno loved that about him — the way he put experiences above comfort, not happy to rest until he’d made a satisfying memory. “I never told you about that night I was injured. Not properly.”

“No. You don’t have to.”

“But I want to.” He tilted his head towards the sea, eyes shut, trying to focus on the sound of it. The soft echoes, the swirl of the current. “I told you I was chasing a very valuable artifact. Something one-of-a-kind.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s something many spirits desire.” He opened his eyes, and they were somber, downturned. “An artifact that can turn them mortal. If I possessed it, I would be able to age like any human, and die like one, too. I would be indistinguishable from you.”

Jeno frowned. He understood, then, Renjun’s endless fascination with the human world. He wanted to be a part of it. He did not want to live indefinitely. It was ironic, Jeno thought, because to want to live indefinitely seemed an intrinsically human characteristic. How many books had he read about men seeking immortality and the power it brought? Now, to Jeno, it seemed naive. Living forever was not a simple blessing.

“I thought if I had it,” Renjun continued, “I could love a human properly. No watching them grow without me. No watching them die. But I failed to take the artifact, so nothing has changed.” He stopped, abruptly, still watching the water. A ship passed on the horizon, its windows lit up through the dark. “I’m sorry, Jeno. I wish I could be real to you. I wish I could have a real relationship — but I always end up drifting away.”

“Then don’t,” Jeno urged. He tugged on Renjun’s hand, turning him so they stood face-to-face. “Listen. It doesn’t matter to me if we don’t share a grave, or whatever romantic notion people like to cling to. I love you now, and I’ll love you in fifty years, even if you never change.”

“You know…” Renjun’s voice cracked, as if he was holding back tears. “If you die someday — _when_ you die — I’ll have to move on. Maybe I’ll fall in love with someone else. Maybe I’ll live long enough to love a hundred more people. You’re really okay with that?” In the distance, the ship continued on, lights obscured by the fog, disappearing and continuing on at the same time.

“I don’t mind,” Jeno told him. He took a step closer, pressing their foreheads together, cradling Renjun’s face in his hands. “As long as you stay with me to the end of _my_ lifetime. Whatever comes after that — I’m happy as long as you’re happy.”

He reached into his pocket, and pulled out the ring. Renjun’s lips made an _o_ to match it.

“Is this okay?” Jeno asked.

Renjun’s smile was a beacon in the dark. He nodded vigorously, and took the ring from Jeno’s hands. He was trembling too hard to slip it onto his finger.

“Oh — wait.” Jeno reached into his pocket again, and this time produced a thin, pale blue ribbon. It had been stolen from their hotel room curtains. “Put it on here, and you can wear it around your neck instead. That way, if you transform, it won’t fall off.”

Renjun was so struck at the thoughtfulness that he forgot the ring even existed for a moment, too preoccupied by his need to kiss Jeno, to prove that he meant _I’ll stay,_ to prove that he meant _I’m happy, just like this._

—

It was still winter. Of course it was still winter, Jeno thought, because winters in the north were neverending. Ordinarily, he would have been tired of the cold by then, but he was beginning to appreciate winter more than ever, because sometimes the cold wind brought him lovely, life-changing things.

On that night, it brought him a little fox with a ribbon around its neck.

He was lying in bed, listening to the crackle of the hearth as it lulled him to sleep, when he was jarred fully back awake by the opening and closing of the cabin door. He looked over the side of the bed to see the fox padding towards him, gold ring glinting against its white ruff, and then it was a boy, who didn’t hesitate before climbing into bed beside him.

“I thought you were an intruder,” Jeno said through a yawn.

“You knew who it was, foolish human.” Renjun worked his way in under the blankets, cuddling against Jeno’s shoulder.

“You haven’t just come from another man’s bed, have you?”

Renjun gently smacked Jeno beneath the covers. “Who do you think I am? I am _divine._ My moral compass is unshakeable.”

Jeno laughed, breath ruffling Renjun’s hair.

He often came and went these days, splitting his time between Jeno’s cabin and his home out in the forest, among his own kind. At least once a week he returned during the dead of night, not even knocking before inviting himself inside. He didn’t need to knock, really — it was just as much his house as it was Jeno’s, at that point.

Renjun’s skin was still chilled from the winter night. Jeno pulled him closer, running his hands along Renjun’s back, trying to warm him up. Renjun propped himself on an elbow, leaning over Jeno’s face to kiss him. His ring hung from the ribbon on his neck, and it touched against Jeno’s chest. In the firelight, it glowed, a perfect circle, a perfect, unseverable link.

Jeno fell asleep first. Renjun watched his face, warmly and lovingly, and wished he could keep him forever. But even if he couldn’t, he’d already promised him the next best thing.

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you all enjoyed the spice!! looking forward to reading your comments as always 💖💖💖 thank you to everyone who put up with my constant "FOX RENJUN" tweets for the past few weeks -- hope it was worth the wait!
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/playing_prince) | [cc](https://curiouscat.me/playing_prince)


End file.
